House lawmakers in North Carolina approved a bill Tuesday that aims to prevent misunderstandings between law enforcement officers and drivers with autism spectrum disorder.

House Bill 21 would allow people to get a notation on the electronic record tied to their driver’s license that lets officers know they have autism. The bill would also require that law enforcement officers be trained to recognize and properly interact with people with autism spectrum disorder.

The bill, drafted at the request of the Autism Society of North Carolina, was approved unanimously. It now moves to the Senate, where two similar bills have languished in recent years.

The license designation would be voluntary. The sponsors, Republican state Rep. Howard Penny Jr. of Harnett County and Democratic state Rep. Zack Hawkins of Durham, say the goal is to protect both law enforcement officers and drivers with autism, who may not always know how to respond to each other.

Those interactions become more likely each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every 150 children age 8 were diagnosed with autism in the U.S. in 2000; by 2020, that number was one in 36. The CDC estimates that more than 5.4 million adults had autism spectrum disorder in 2017, or about 2.2% of the adult population.

“Twenty-five years ago, most people with autism were not working regular jobs and/or operating vehicles,” Hawkins told members of the House Transportation Committee last week. “And now that we’re at this point, we have to put protections in place.”

Despite the bill’s widespread support, some lawmakers question its effectiveness. The autism designation would appear only on a person’s electronic driving record, so law enforcement officers wouldn’t discover it until they’ve obtained the license and checked it against the database.

“I’m just afraid this is not going to do what everyone is hoping it’s going to do,” said state Rep. Mark Pless, a Republican from Haywood County. “Because the situation is already going to result in an arrest or an altercation or something going wrong before they even know who they were dealing with.”

Other members of the House Transportation Committee suggested other ways officers could learn earlier in a traffic stop that a driver has autism, such as a special handicapped placard on the rearview mirror. State Rep. Deb Butler of New Hanover County suggested the designation be applied to the vehicle’s license plate, which officers often check before talking with the driver.

“If you could tie it to the plates in that family somehow, then the officer would then have notice even before he gets out of his cruiser,” Butler said.

Hawkins and Penny thanked colleagues for their suggestions, but said the Autism Society and others in the community want the designation to be discrete, for fear of inviting discrimination.

“Because disability discrimination is a real thing, unfortunately,” Hawkins said.

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